Fire forged friends
by Arianna Scribbler
Summary: When the usual channels are closed and the standard path for rebellion has crumbled beneath you there exist precious few choices for bringing change. Les Amis de l'ABC, former friends of the oppressed and mouthpieces for the voiceless, have chosen theirs, and woe to any who stand against them.
1. Amis de vengence, Amis de rage

Author's note: This is directly inspired by a prompt on tumblr, which I would be happy to provide to anyone interested. The gist of it is "Modern AU with Les Amis as criminals." Though it is marked as a chaptered story, each chapter should be able to stand on its own. They may build on each other as the worldbuilding gets more elaborate but I don't foresee any multi-chapter arcs. If that changes I'll mark them clearly.

Disclaimer: _Les Miserables _belongs to the Estate of Victor Hugo and the producers of both film and musical. I am earning no money from this work of fiction.

* * *

What the news calls them depends on the day and the current trends in public opinion. Gang is always a popular label, with dangerous criminals appearing nearly as often. Sometimes it's even terrorists, if the networks are feeling brave or controversial. To government officials they're dissidents, dangerous and threats to national security. Satirical columns and websites call them freedom fighters and dare anyone to object. Kids on the street, the ones with no home and no bread and no future, call them crazy or inspirational and definitely not to be fucked with. Some call them the future's best hope, some call them the bringers of certain destruction.

They call themselves Les Amis.

The name was Enjolras' idea, a holdover from back when they thought this could all be sorted out peacefully. Les Amis de l'ABC they'd been then, most of them students, all of them hopelessly naïve. Friends of the abased, allies to the oppressed, speakers for the voiceless. Enjolras had shown up every day bursting with new ideas and inspirational slogans and grand visions of the future. He'd burned with undiluted, earnest conviction and his fire drew the others to him like moths to a flame until they too began to believe.

Five years and countless failures later Enjolras still burns, but his flames have turned into agents of destruction, incinerating any who get too close. His idealism darkened to anger to hatred to rage. He inspires destruction now, drives his friends to create chaos instead of revolution, to obliterate what cannot be moved. He'd tried playing by the rules and managed nothing, had followed the script given to people like them and been spurned by the very populace he sought to raise up. Enjolras is no longer Apollo, burning with the sun's pure light, but Lucifer, thrown from the heaven he loved and determined to bring it all crashing down to join him.

Les Amis are more than willing to help.

* * *

"The tyrant's speech is tomorrow." Courfeyrac leans back slightly in his chair, looking around at the group. They meet in an abandoned café, once owned by the Patron-Mignet gang, now given to Enjolras and his friends. "Are we prepared?"

Around him the other members of the group nod. Some grin. Jehan flicks his lighter on and it gives his delicate features an almost demonic glow. Eponine's produced a knife from somewhere in the folds of her ragged clothes and has it balanced on one finger.

"We _need_ to make a statement," Enjolras says. Alone of all the Amis he carries no weapons. Enjolras strides through the destruction his friends create and no one dares touch him, not even his most avowed enemies. "They're expecting us."

"Well then, let's not disappoint." Bahorel grins wolfishly. Next to him Grantaire nods and drains the last of his bottle of wine. His hands are steady despite the amount of alcohol in his system, and he watches Enjolras' every move out of habit now rather than necessity. Alone out of all of them Grantaire has retained a shadow of their original ideals, spray-painting messages of freedom and revolution across Paris' buildings and bridges in sprawling handwriting.

"It's been a while since we did something big," Marius observes. "Maybe they think we're gone for good."

"Their mistake," Bahorel says. Of all Les Amis he enjoys the chaos the most. Jehan might revel in the indiscriminate destruction of fire and Eponine might draw her strength from the moment when a peaceful crowd turns to a riot but Bahorel personifies chaos itself, a gleeful Ares who cares more about the fight than its outcome.

The others all nod. Combeferre pulls out a crumpled diagram of the Champs Elysees and starts going over the plan one last time. Eponine's knife has vanished back into her dress and her sharp eyes follow Combeferre's evocative gestures closely. Next to Marius Cosette leans forward, hands folded daintily in her lap and face arranged into an expression of pleasant interest. Cosette will flatter you as she kills you and her once delicate white gloves are stained rust brown with blood.

They break for the night at last, scattering alone or in pairs as they head back to their homes. Enjolras stays in the now deserted café, pouring himself a glass of wine and prowling up and down before the unused fireplace. Even in the darkness his eyes seem to glow slightly with the inhuman light of conviction and anticipation.

* * *

The packed Champs Elysees rings with cheers. Feuilly, with a performer's sense of timing, cuts the power just as the president's speech reaches its apex, and Combeferre lets off a round of bullets aimed at the president and his entourage just a moment after. None of them touch the man himself – his guards have been well trained and they dive to get him out of the way the moment the microphone fails. Cosette and Marius turn on the crowd they infiltrated and Jehan starts counting down the thirty seconds before he can start the blaze. It hasn't rained in several days, unusual for Paris, and the city is ripe for burning. Enjolras and Grantaire wait from their vantage point a little ways removed from the crowd, the one unarmed as ever and the other holding a can of spray paint in one hand and an unlit Molotov cocktail in the other.

Jehan lights his fuses and the screams of the crowd increase. Eponine darts in, face alight with delight and with hunger. She's got knives in both hands, sliver blades gleaming in the growing fire. Within minutes her face and arms are covered in blood. She moves lightly, childhood ballet training combining with an adolescence spent picking pockets to give her almost impossible grace. Hers is a dance of murderous intent as she drinks in the crowd's fear and sinks her knives into their flesh. Bahorel too wades into the crowd, wolfish grin back as he knocks a man down and watches his fellow civilians trample him to death.

Grantaire has slipped off, picking his way through the outer edges of the crowd towards the presidential palace. The president and his entourage are in as much chaos as the spectators, though they're mostly untouched by the spreading violence. He gets behind them with little trouble and opens his can of spray paint, unlit cocktail carefully at his feet.

In the crowd Eponine and Cosette cross paths, both spattered with blood from the veins of others. They exchange grins, Eponine's manic and Cosette's eager. Light as birds both, with smiles that hide razors and fingers coated in poison. Bahorel pushes past them, expression filled with unholy delight. Jehan moves through the growing riot to join him and the two stand back to back, lithe poet matching robust fighter blow for blow.

The sound of sirens heralds the arrival of the authorities. Enjolras, previously removed from the main fighting, strides through the crowd which parts for him like an obedient sea. He stands face to face with the head of the National Guard, his beautiful face terrible in the flickering light of the growing inferno. The guardsmen raise their guns when they see him and he raises his hands, not in surrender but in challenge. They are streaked with red paint, drops of which fall to the ground like blood.

"Stand down!" the chief guardsman barks. "Or we shoot."

"I am the people," Enjolras replies, voice pitched above the roar of crowd and fire. "You cannot shoot a dream."

The guardsman makes a vicious hand gesture, the order to shoot. Within moments the air is thick with bullets. When the smoke of discharging guns clears Enjolras is nowhere to be found. A pair of red handprints sit defiantly where he stood mere moments before, paint still fresh. The rest of the Amis have similarly vanished from sight, leaving nothing but the still blazing inferno, a trail of dead bodies, and Grantaire's scrawled slogans to mark their passing.

* * *

Joly and Combeferre patch them up. The battered television in the back of the café runs footage of the riot. Grantaire's graffiti is not shown on tv, but it doesn't matter. It's been seen by those who matter and already word is spreading that this is only the beginning. The Amis have been active for five years, but this is their most audacious appearance in months and the authorities are suddenly antsy.

Combeferre finishes bandaging the last of Bahorel's wounds and turns towards Enjolras, face set. The blond leader was left not completely untouched; some stray bullets nicked him and his left hand sports a bright red burn. He pulls away from Combeferre's touch. "I will keep my scars," he says. "As long as France bleeds then so do I."

Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchange glances, more than accustomed to their friend's stubbornness in this respect.

"You cannot bandage the wounds of France if you die of your own," Combeferre says firmly. "And you won't make much of a symbol if you grow weak with blood loss and infection."

Courfeyrac joins them, deliberately brushing against the still sluggishly bleeding flesh wound in Enjolras' side to make him grit his teeth in sudden pain. "Festering wounds are hardly dashing," he agrees. He sports a bandage of his own around his head and Combeferre bats his hand away before he's quite made up in his mind to touch it again.

In one corner of the room Marius sits with Cosette and Eponine, the three of them deep in conversation. They joined the group last, disaffected civilians all, each with their own story. There's Marius, whose father's loyal service to the government earned him only scorn and an unmarked grave, Cosette, raised by a convict, heart full of dreams crumbled into ash, and Eponine who's experienced the brutality of the system first hand in a way the others can barely imagine. No one knows how they met each other, or how they work as a trio, but they're as inseparable as Joly and Bossuet, as perfectly complimentary as Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac. They're laughing now, heads bent together in shared merriment. Combeferre takes advantage of Enjolras' momentary distraction to dab burn cream on his hand and looks completely unrepentant when Enjolras shoots him a glare.

In the back of the room the television continues to play the news as one guest after the other assures the loyal public that the dissidents will be found and captured. At his table next to the screen Grantaire pours himself another drink and salutes the defense minister promising stricter curfews and threatening martial law should the criminals not be brought to justice, a sardonic grin on his face. "Vive la république," he says dryly and drains his glass.


	2. Lonely soul

Author's note: I am... not entirely sure what happened here. This isn't really where I meant to go at all. But it's what happened and it seems to have stuck. So sorry?

Disclaimer: _Les Miserables_ belongs to the Estate of Victor Hugo. No money is being made from this project.

* * *

They were children together.

Marius, oldest of the three, grew up alone in his grandfather's echoing house with only books and silence for company. He nourished his mind while his heart starved, filling his thoughts with all the information he could digest in order to distract himself from the weight of loneliness

Cosette grew up behind tall stone walls, raised by a man as gentle as he appeared fearsome. She learned early to trust no one and to keep her mouth closed, learned to hide her loving heart behind walls built of suspicion in order to survive, learned that there is no criminal worse than the lawman. Cosette had no companion save her father and after she'd seen him beaten and led away by men sworn to defend the public she had no one at all.

Eponine's father gave her kisses when they were rich and beat her when they were poor. Her teeth fell out as she grew older and the luster faded from her hair. What began as childish greed and self-centeredness cemented into the harsh selfishness of the desperate. She fought tooth and nail for each scrap of dignity and crumb of bread, wielding her stolen knives like claws. Eponine ran wild in the streets at night and huddled submissively in corners during the day and allowed herself to dream of better days.

These three children, lost, lonely, oh so alone, different from each other as sun and rain and wind, found each other in dirty city streets and carefully tailored gardens. Marius caught glimpses of Cosette's black mourning skirts as he walked through the wealthy part of the city on his way to class. Cosette paused to offer coins to Eponine, thinking her just another beggar woman, and beneath Eponine's mumbled thanks was an undercurrent of hatred. Marius and Eponine lived in the same run down neighborhood, nodding in greeting as they passed each other.

They found each other by chance, or perhaps through fate. Eponine tracked Cosette back to her walled home to rob her and instead taught her to fight, watching porcelain-white fingers awkwardly grasp a knife and slowly become accustomed to its weight. Cosette, one foot already hesitating over the well of violence, shed her pretty dresses and wiped off her expensive makeup and followed Eponine into her part of the city, knife heavy in her pocket as they searched for victims. Eponine prowled dark alleys like a wolf, lean and ragged and deadly. Cosette, light as a bird, followed close behind, still uncertain whether Eponine had come as her friend or her executioner.

Marius found them at Eponine's tiny rooms when they were washing the blood from their hands. He left them alone that day, retired to his shabby freezing rooms and trembled with more than just cold. Within two days he was back, watching in morbid fascination as Eponine taught Cosette to wash the blood from her dress. Eponine fixed him with a sharp-eyed glare and tartly demanded that he help with the cleanup or leave.

He helped.

They fell into a pattern somehow, three lost children with too much pain and too little comfort. Eponine taught Cosette to fight and swore each night that this would be the one she slit the other's throat and robbed her blind. Cosette learned to kill and to dance and refused to be as wary as she should be, though her reflexes grew sharp and her reaction times quick and Eponine began to wonder whether she would be able to kill her when the time came. Marius watched them both with badly concealed admiration, eyes tracing the neat curves of Cosette's figure as she crept through allies and following the gleam of Eponine's knife, thrust deftly through a stranger's vocal chords. He declined a knife of his own, still too loyal to the system that had served his grandfather well to take justice into his own hands.

Gavroche connected him with the others, little Gavroche who belonged to everyone and no one, who roamed the streets and knew everyone. Gavroche, who had no respect for anything save the power of death and who would as soon spit on a politician as deflect to one. He led Marius to the protest group and demanded the last of Marius' coin for the service. Marius handed it over, eyes darting around the room to take in the group. Without realizing it he had adopted Eponine's defensive stance, tensed to run or to fight, still as a deer in headlights as he gauged the reactions of the assembled students. The tension made him look worried rather than dangerous, lacking as he was any of Eponine's jagged edges and underlying threat, and within moments the tension broke as one of the boys began to laugh. It was laugher of joy, not tinged with bitterness or malice, and the novelty was enough for Marius to sit down, to stay, to listen.

That night he returned to the girls and helped them rinse out their soiled clothes. He did not say anything about the students.

(When the barricade fell and the people didn't rise Marius was there, fighting as he had never wished to before, and when the students vanished like ghosts, beaten but far from defeated, Marius brought Eponine and Cosette to meet the others. They all knew better than to ask questions. Sharp-edged smiles and gleaming knives spoke for themselves on both sides.)


	3. And I shall follow you unto death itself

Author's note: This is probably AU. Yes, more AU than the rest of it. Call it an outtake. And yes, this is seriously grim and not at all happy. CW for character death and violence.

Disclaimer: _Les Miserables _belongs to the estate of Victor Hugo. No money is being made from this project.

* * *

It wasn't supposed to end this way. It was supposed to end in glory, in bullets and blood and bright red paint, was supposed to end with Enjolras defiantly screaming his cause to the skies as he fell and Combeferre standing right beside him, their hands clasped in triumphant solidarity. It was supposed to end fast, a single shot, a short fall, an irreversible sacrifice that did anything but concede defeat.

It wasn't supposed to end with a badly healed broken leg and a blinded left eye and hands that never stopped trembling, with their faces exposed to the world and bounties on their heads. It wasn't supposed to end with them running for their lives, alone and friendless and never sure what to do next. It wasn't supposed to keep going.

Enjolras spent his days prowling whatever hiding place they'd found and discarding plans; he spent his nights shaking and refusing to accept comfort. Combeferre, always quiet, retreated into near permanent silence, lost in his thoughts for hours at a time. Neither remembered to eat. A partnership that had once been easy as breathing had become filled with traps, each interaction a reminder of what they had lost and how they had failed. Enjolras' eyes were empty and his hair hung limp; Combeferre's shirts stayed wrinkled for days on end. They did not look at each other, not with each glance charged with layer upon layer of meaning and memory and loss. Sometimes Combeferre forgot that things had ever been different, forgot that he and Enjolras had ever acted as a single being and guarded each others' backs with eerie perfection when called upon to fight. Sometimes he remembered every such instance with icy clarity and could barely breathe with the sudden weight of times past.

Sometimes Combeferre wished he could remember nothing at all.

They kept moving, never staying in one place longer than a few nights, always keeping ahead of those who would have their heads on platters. Enjolras made speeches to the local people, words as fiery as ever even as his inner flame withered to dust. Combeferre stood next to him, a silent shadow, acting as his second almost as smoothly as he had before. If the villagers guessed how much of it was performance they never said. They never acted either, listening with uncomprehending politeness and asking the two to move on. Sometimes it was done without the politeness and Enjolras always refused to defend himself, no matter that they didn't have the supplies to treat serious injuries. The word penance never left his lips, but that at least Combeferre could still read. He never complained, not when the villagers blows rained down on his bowed shoulders or when on rainy nights his bad leg hurt so much he could barely stand. Only in his stubborn silence did Combeferre see flashes of his old friend, of his raw determination and conviction-filled self-sacrifice.

Together they fled, walking when they could and stealing cars when walking became too much. They owned only what they could carry, guarding guns and ammunition more dearly than they ever had books or clothing. Enjolras, who had once walked weaponless through crowds of armed guards and watched them lower their guns, now carried a revolver at his side even when he slept. Combeferre kept his guns spotless, polishing them to a sheen worthy of being in a museum, running hands over the smooth metal as though he could render them unnecessary through will alone.

Interpol found them once, camped deep in the forests of Poland, both desperately not bringing up their shared memories and wishing they had never come. The firefight was brief and decisive; Enjolras had become a wounded animal, devoid of anything save his pain and his anger, and he fought with a savage ruthlessness that shocked the policemen. Combeferre guarded Enjolras' back, matching his steps and shooting those policemen who escaped Enjolras' fire. It did not feel as right as it had once but it felt more right than anything had in a long time.

When the fight was over they collected the ammunition from the corpses of fallen policemen and stripped them of any valuables. Neither spoke, and when they left the site of the battlefield they did not fall into step.

Marius and the girls found them near Amsterdam. Combeferre's heart skipped several beats when he caught sight of them and a stirring of unfamiliar warmth crept through him. They were not the last after all, not the only ones to have survived what was meant to be a last stand. Marius sported a jagged scar on his chest where a guardsman's club had broken through his skin to reach his ribs. The girls sported no outward injuries, no scars to show their past failures, but Eponine's eyes were wilder than ever and even Cosette treaded carefully around her. The lark herself no longer sang as she cleaned and sharpened her knives, and when she slid them through flesh like hot butter she did not murmur prayers for the departing souls of those who fell.

Enjolras and Combeferre traveled with them for a few days, speaking little and staying close together. Eponine's laugher was harsh when it came, brittle like broken glass and twice as sharp. Her tattered dress was stained with the blood of her victims and she moved like a wolf. Cosette and Marius flanked her, the three of them more of a pack than ever, faces similarly intense and a little wild. Even Marius had found his sharp edges at last, and in the flickering firelight he looked just as dangerous as the girls. Cosette still offered welcoming smiles and peals of laughter, but her face had grown gaunt and her smiles did not reach her eyes. They clung to each other, the three of them, melted into their trio until it became impossible to separate one from the others. At night they slept curled up together, pressed against each other for warmth and for protection, limbs entangled to remind themselves that they still existed.

When Enjolras and Combeferre split to continue on their own path Marius offered them a knife and Cosette her blessing. They refused both; Eponine's dark eyes danced with cruel amusement. The two were not sorry to leave. What little warmth had filled Combeferre's soul upon meeting them again had long since melted back into ice.

The first night they spent on their own after that the wind blew at gale forces and sent irrepressible shivers through them. Without quite meaning to they found themselves huddled together, pressed close to trap as much body heat as possible. Enjolras' hair brushed against Combeferre's neck while Combeferre's calloused fingers dug into Enjolras' back. By the next night the winds had slowed and the temperature was warm again but they found each other anyway, clinging to each other as they never had before. During the day they still said nothing, and when they walked their steps remained out of synch.

It didn't last. They both knew it couldn't, both knew they didn't want it to. They existed on borrowed time anyway, lived lives never meant for them, survived long past their expiration date. Backs pressed against a brick wall in the poor part of Milan they emptied their guns into the oncoming policemen and knew it would make no difference. The law was prepared this time, had learned from its mistakes and sent more men, had cornered them instead of giving them room to escape. They had nowhere to run and no desire to try.

Enjolras reached for Combeferre's hand as the guns were leveled at their hearts. Combeferre grasped Enjolras' offered hand and together they stood, hearts beating as one, eyes blazing and chins lifted high. They fell together, sprawling out next to each other, their joint blood spilling out onto the pavement and running into the gutters. There were no defiant last words, no meaningful flags or banners, nothing but the sharp sound of gunshots and the thuds as their corpses hit the ground.

They were buried together, hands still entwined, finding in death the partnership they had all but lost during their lives.


End file.
